I received an email this week asking me to write a product review. I’m pretty sure the chap hadn’t read my blog before. At first I thought “Never!” and then I remembered I’ve already sold my soul to the company, why not sell my dignity too?
I agreed under the following conditions: (1) I get to write the review as I wish and, (2) the managers in the office have to make coffee for their assistants for a week. I nearly got away with number (2). Still, 50% of the conditions is half way there. Without further adieu, here is my review of the Chesterfield Medicine Cabinet (those easily offended should come back next week when I’ll be discussing pen lids):
Have you had a hard day at the office? Have you turned to self-medication like me? Do you get frustrated that your medicine cabinet doesn’t hold enough Valium, Xanax and Ambien?
Introducing the all new Chesterfield Medicine Cabinet. With its convenient central shelf you can now store twice as many pills as a shelfless cabinet. What’s more, its frosted glass pane lets you see when you’re running low – without even opening the door!
But what’s that you say? You’re concerned that having such a convenient drugs chest will only fuel your habit? Not to worry! The Chesterfield is made of wood, which can easily be smashed and burned in the garden when you kick your prescription habit.
Well, that worked out as well as can be expected.
Oh right, it’s a giveaway. I almost forgot about that part. To win the lovely smack cabinet from the Vanity Store all you have to do is review Workforced on your blog and leave a comment that lets me know you’ve done it. The best review wins. Simple!
Never before has another man’s flatulence so offended me. Last Friday lunchtime I was waiting for the elevator at work – a fancy glass elevator nonetheless. I know what you’re thinking: someone passed gas in the elevator and it was an unpleasant journey. In essence yes, that is what happened. However such simple words do little justice to a fume so noxious it could wake up the comatose, before killing them.
At 1.20 pm precisely I saw a rotund gentleman descend several floors before the elevator stopped at the lobby. He was slightly balding, wearing a gray suit. There was nothing about his outward appearance that suggested he had a sphincter that Satan uses as a second home.
The elevator doors opened and he scurried out, looking down at his shoes. The look on his face can best be described as anguished. I suppose it was appropriate to avoid eye contact because there’s no glance you can share that offers the appropriate level of apology. There is no fleeting squint, no blink and no flutter of eyelashes that comes close to the handwritten apology that would be required for opening such a sewage plant in a confined space.
I skipped into the elevator with all the joys of a bunny in the summer fields. No sooner had the doors started to close than my nostrils began to quiver like the same rabbit smelling the landfill he’d just skipped onto. Time slowed down. Sweet mother of mercy. The last thing I remember hearing was my own voice “D…a…m…n…! W…h…a…t d…i…d… y…o..u… e…a…t… … … ?”
It was like a cumulus cloud of fetid tripe. It smelt worse than a fire in a wig factory. Worse than a manure truck parked in the sun. Honestly, it was worse than the Mummy’s tennis shorts. That smell will outlast governments. I only imagine what the people in the lobby thought as they saw me clawing up the glass over a seven floor journey. Why is he eating his own face?
With as few breaths as possible I made it to floor seven. Red faced but panting the doors opened once again. Precious escape! But no! No! No! Why is this the exact time when the receptionist (and office gossip) decides to get lunch? She’ll think it’s me, her red-faced panting colleague. I wanted to say something, to explain, to let her know that nothing so hideous could possibly come out of me.
But what could I say? What glance could I possibly offer her to explain so much in so few passing milliseconds? Instead I just looked at my shoes and scurried past. I heard a peep as the doors began to close on her. My back stiffened and I rushed back to my desk to eat lunch and pretend that the office wouldn’t have a new nickname for me by 2pm.
Until next time,
Brown Pants
p.s. No receptionists were harmed during the writing of this post. Except one.
Big companies have more people you don’t know and more training courses where you can meet them. In a room full of strangers, none of whom wants to be thought of a fool, it’s very easy to do very little work, simply by keeping as quiet as everyone else. When in doubt I just nod and avoid eye contact. I’ve been on over ten development courses without ever having learned a thing.
Most colleagues are hesitant to speak out in public (especially on public speaking courses). To overcome the initial silence trainers often ask you to introduce yourself and answer an oddball question: the ice-breaker.
I went to one course where each person was asked to state their name, role and how long they had been at the company for. We were then asked to say what type of musical instrument we would be and why. At the time I answered “A triangle because I have no concept of scale”. It seemed witty enough for a management course. Sadly it was met with such a silence you could have heard a triangle. In retrospect I deeply regret not answering “Right now I feel like a huge organ”.
And you thought this was all made up.
Trainers love props and gimmicks; they spice up the monotony of exercises and group discussions. On a project management course I was asked to throw a sponge ball at a flipchart to illustrate the importance of having a well-defined target. It was such a brilliant metaphor I wish I had thrown the flipchart at the trainer to illustrate the difficulty of having moving targets. Still, not nearly as embarrassing as the public speaking class where we were asked to make monkey faces to help us overcome our fear of public humiliation.
During an anti-harassment training we were asked to classify behaviors as either green, yellow or red. Never have so many people been so patronized for so long. Examples of phrases that we were asked to give a color to: (1) “Good morning, how are you?” and (2) Sleep with me, or you are fired!” I ‘brown’ you not – they were real examples. No one else agreed with me that statement (1) was red if you’re a night worker starting a shift several hours behind schedule.
The saving grace of this course came later when I saw the supporting course materials that my company had rejected. In one handbook, which explained what work attire was inappropriate, there was a full page cleavage photograph crossed through with a red line. Hurrah!
A lot of the instructors that parasitize large corporations are like medical leeches: they do more harm than good when applied to healthy individuals.
External instructors typically work for small, specialist training firms or institutes. They may have even founded them themselves. It’s in the refuge of these institutes that they can freely express their opinions about whether or not to capitalize given words in chart titles. I heard one instructor say “You’re smoking crack if you expect to check formulas like this on a Friday afternoon.” I didn’t know people who smoke crack expect to spend Friday afternoons checking formulas.
At another course the instructor’s biography read “She is President of the Foundation for X and Executive Director of the Centre for X. She is highly published and has done original research in the field of X. She is a regular keynote speaker at the International Conference on X and is a recognized leader in the field [of X].” In actual fact the instructor had established the center for “X” some years earlier. The institute shall remain nameless, not by my doing but by her excruciating incompetence.
She tottered about the classroom making sweeping claims about the causes of worldwide woe and babbling nonsense like “As humans we live in our minds.” I’m not sure you live in yours, unless you’ve been checking formulas on a Friday afternoon.
At one point she cited Nazism, an errant teenage son, global warming and an article about a student who fell off a cliff as examples of failures in management thinking. Not an iota of possibility was ascribed to geopolitics, bad parenting or the wrong hiking boots. How many deaths could have been avoided if the Nazis had used her “assumption wheel?” The class sat in silence, dumbfounded.
Her slides were in keeping: she used a clipart Jekyll and Hyde caricature, unrelated newspaper clippings and all manner of mnemonic polygons. She also had a peculiar habit of taking very long pauses and staring intently after making a point, any point. Presumably, she hoped we’d be struck by her pearls of wisdom as if they were flushed from an aeroplane’s toilet.
As if that were not enough, the group exercises consisted of copying out passages in her various pamphlets and then discussing the notes. You can lead a camel to an oasis but it can’t drink a mirage.
My displeasure with the course was all too evident and the instructor made it clear that she would refuse to teach any more courses if I signed up. Pen please! The main lesson here is that you should never sit at the front of the class until you’re sure that your instructor doesn’t lack any major cognitive faculties.
I wish I could say my experiences were unique but judging by your comments I’m not alone. It appears that there’s no shortage of teachers with dubious qualifications, equally dubious statistics, sweeping generalizations and a smattering of cringe-worthy acronyms, all poorly referenced. Perhaps statistics help us overlook the glaring holes in the trainer’s résumé. The less value a course has, the more a trainer needs acronyms and silly phrases (‘dialoguing sessions’) to generate an air of worthiness. There’s plenty of other techniques too: they will try ‘unorthodox’ methods, hand out tip sheets and encourage you to “be yourself”. If you wouldn’t mind being someone else whilst you’re being yourself, that would be great.
In Other News…
I’ve been reviewed again, and this time by someone I didn’t ask! At least, I don’t remember asking. Check out the “Do You Digg It” review here.
Having just finished a three day course I thought it high time to expose the follies of training. Supposedly, training exists because I’m inadequate. In actual fact most training exists because the trainers are otherwise unemployable. I have just spent the best part of a work week being superbly trained for mediocrity by a man who’s skill-set consisted of (a) being patronizing and (b) over-charging. Where to begin? Let’s start with some of the courses I’ve been on over the years, including:
- Preventing sexual harassment – “Who here refers to their penis as a hole-punch?”,
- Industry overviews – “You still don’t know what we do, do you?”,
- Presentation skills – “Like um, who likes, um, public speaking, um?”,
- Facilitating meetings – “We’d call it leading a meeting but that’s too confrontational for some of you.”,
- Management skills – “The only reason we’ll let you manage people is because you’re less incompetent than some of the others.”, and
- Critical Thinking – “Can anyone guess how much they’re paying me to lead this course?”.
I’m in the wrong game; I should be a trainer instead. If conjure up a course I’ll be set for life. Now let me see; what do I have to do to make up a bogus but passable corporate training course?
Firstly, I need a catchy name, using a professional-sounding word like “management,” “communication” or “execution.” After that a course title needs an emphatic word or phrase, such as “critical,” “professional” or “for success.” Perfect! Now I can make up a title like “critical execution” or “effective management.” I’ll also need an empty slogan like “Command your thinking before your thinking commands you” of “If you fail to plan you plan to fail.” This is too easy.
Now that the mumbo-jumbo gumbo is simmering on the hob, I just need to season it with a PowerPoint presentation, flip-chart and a pack of highlighters. I’ll garnish with a geometric shape on which sections of the course are superimposed. You know I’m serious when I introduce the Triangle of Efficiency, the Square of Communication or the Dodecahedron of Decision-Making. Delicious!
A self-published book and a pack of laminated cards later and I’ve even bought myself credibility. The fact that no one will read my book after the course is not the point. You need only sound convincing; no one cares about the content. Writing a book no more qualifies it’s author to teach than having a poo qualifies me to be a plumber.
Ladies and gentlemen, here is your main course:
See if you can make up one of your own. Then see if you can certify yourself and charge a large blue chip a fortune.
Workforced Quarterly Sales Report
Team, you will remember that the business plan clearly states World domination in the first year. Now, we’ve gained good traction amongst males 18-25 but this is only because a powerful mogul in the media industry has confused me, Don Joe, with rapper Fat Joe. Consequently, I will be releasing a new single featuring Akon. Fat Joe will also be guest writing for Workforced. Look out for his first article “I’m in the office mutha’ flipper” coming soon.
Despite this unexpected triumph, we’ve still not conquered the globe. You may be thinking that I shoulder the responsibility for making this blog more popular but remember, there’s no “I” in team. We’re in this together. Furthermore, there is a “facelift” in fecal fit, so instead of throwing poo all over my cage like an angry monkey, I’m sprucing up the Workforced homepage.
New features will include the “boss button”, which you can click if someone approaches your desk when you’re reading Workforced at work. A mock spreadsheet will pop up and no one will be any the wiser. Workforced’s tea boy and talented illustrator Sam Szulc has also been conjuring up a new homepage using a felt tip pen on napkins when he should be working. Here’s a preview of why I can’t get a hot cup of tea around here:
I know, I know. I should make the tea more often.
Payroll
Payroll is the most important department in the company. It’s only because of Payroll that I exhume myself from under the warm duvet five days a week and trundle into the office. I cannot say that of any other department. If IT ceased to exist I’d still come to work. I’d just spend less time browsing handbags on eBay (for my girlfriend).
If Payroll ceased to exist I’d neither have the urge to come into the office nor the means to buy the fabulous beige leather Gucci bag with the clasp to die for. You go girlfriend. Sorry; I mean for my girlfriend.
Of course, Payroll has the unenviable task of dealing with everyone else. I received an email this week from graphic designer Amanda at HIS Daughter Studio, detailing a conversation she’d had with payroll.
| Thursday, Aug 20, 2009
Now that I am full time, will I still get my check on Fridays? I checked my bank acct, and it hasn’t posted yet, so I wasn’t sure. It used to post by early morning on Fridays.
Thanks,
Amanda |
To which Payroll replied:
|
It’s not Friday.
T.F.
Business Systems Director |
I believe that’s what is commonly known as a “smack down”.
Together Purchasing and Payroll form the backbone of the entity that underpays me. They are like the yin and yang of the corporate coffers: Purchasing keeps turning down my requests for a mahogany keyboard and Payroll hasn’t yet seen fit to give me enough money to buy one of my own.
Purchasing
In any large institution Purchasing takes the unpopular role of guarding the vaults against thieving knaves such as myself (and replacing all the things that I’ve pilfered from the copy room). Unfortunately Purchasing has got wise to me ordering unnecessary peripherals, so there’s little chance that I’ll get the leopard print monitor trim anytime soon.
Instead of seeing Purchasing as a barrier, you should see them more of a wall to be scaled. Given that everyone is trying to shimmy up the same drainpipe to free stuff it’s perhaps no surprise that the wall is high. A lengthy approval process makes it difficult to get anything you genuinely need. Crying wolf has become ‘for crying out loud.’
I refer you to a copy of the email I sent to the managers that approved my last request, all six of them. Names have been changed to protect the guilty. My original request was to a chap in IT, who we’ll call Doc.
Good afternoon Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Dopey, Grumpy and Bashful,
I asked Doc if he was able to update me on whether the ergonomic mouse I requested had been ordered because my wrist is aching. You have each now approved the purchase so thank you. I am a little concerned about the process of approval because the mouse itself only costs $39.
If each person took five minutes to make an approval and pass it on that would total thirty minutes. Let’s also add five minutes for me and five for Doc; we’re at 40 minutes. I am aware that the cost to rent and furnish office space is around $100,000 a year per employee. Let us estimate an associate’s annual wage at $40,000. Given 8 hour days, 22 working days a month and 12 months a year, the all-in cost for 40 minutes of associate time is $44 (140,000 costs / 2112 hours = $66 per hour; $66 * 2/3 hour = $44). By these admittedly rough estimates it may have just cost $5 more to approve the new mouse than the mouse costs. Might we find a way to streamline the approval process?
Yours,
Snow White
Alas, nothing was streamlined
Part 2 early next week…
Thank You To…
Thanks go to Melissa from That’s What She Said for her review of Workforced: “Likely piddling yourself on more than one occasion.” I hope I don’t regularly have that effect on my readers. However, it may explain a recent drop in the number of comments I’m getting. If my readers are losing bladder control whilst reading my posts I will happy circulate appropriate toweling before I next post.
It has been years since I last called myself a student, save for when I’m wrangling cheaper cinema tickets. I’m now much older and slightly squidgier than the fresh-faced toast muncher that wandered aimlessly between the company stands at my first careers’ fair. If I go to a careers’ fair today its to stand on the other side of the table, handing out free pens to anyone that will listen to me rant about the company culture.
I remember promising myself that I’d never spout the same jargon. Yet here I am, taking two days out of the office to drop buzzwords like a game of scrabble where dodgy neologisms score double. One hand is slapping me for being such a corporate hussy; the other is patting me on the back for getting two days out of the office. With any luck I might even flirt with a few students on company time. I have no problem selling my soul, its just that I thought it would have fetched a higher price.
A recruitment trip makes you realize how different the corporate world looks from the other side. The guise of professionalism stops you from letting the students know how misguided their questions are because recruiters are the human equivalent of brochures, just like Barack Obama is the human equivalent of a nourishing skin cream. Obama Cream: powerful, confident, sexy. Only a president smells this good.
It’s amazing the spin a recruiter can put on a position: “It’s a client-facing role where you’ll build up a network of professional relationships. We encourage flexible working practices, including working from home and hours that adapt to your other commitments. The salary is competitive and your compensation will be tied to your performance. If you work as part of a team you’ll have a direct line of communication with your manager.” Also known as prostitution.
I wrote down some of the questions I was asked and the answers I wasn’t able to give:
1. How good are the growth opportunities? The growth opportunities are excellent. Your sedentary lifestyle will give you ample growth around the waist, buttocks and thighs. I’ve already put on five pounds this year.
2. What are the hours like? Each one of them is only sixty minutes but they’ll feel longer.
3. How would you describe the company culture? Imagine a yoghurt without the fruity bits.
4. What is the management structure like? I’m not sure that obnoxious or pedantic are kinds of structure. At the Christmas party I did see one manager give another one a piggy back and that had some structure to it. They fell over soon afterwards and one of them lost a contact lens.
5. How do you work with other offices around the world? Remember, there’s no ‘I’ in team. However there is ‘meat’ and that should give you a general impression. There’s also a ‘Ma’ in team but I don’t think you should bring her into work with you.
Write for Workforced!
I’ve added a new page to the Workforced website: write for Workforced. I’d love to hear your office stories and/or guides to office life. Please send me an email with your scribblings, illustrations, haikus or bank details.
Its an easy way to let off a little comedy steam and get your link on the Workforced website. Plus, I’ll pop round to your parents’ house and install Microsoft Office. Word to mother.
Thank You To…
I’d like to thank Lose That Girl for her review of Workforced this week. “If you’re an office-bound 9-to-5er, you will truly appreciate the wit and smarts that go into Workforced – you might even catch yourself chuckling at an experience that could have been torn from your own life.” I have officially made Lose That Girl’s Jackie the Chief of my PR department, or “CPR” for short.
I’d also like to thank Dropped Stitches for taking a break from photography and knitting needles: “Workforced exposes the absurd folly that is the corporate environment. And it is really funny.” Erin makes me want to take up knitting. How better to darn the massive holes in the corporate socks of my career?
Many years ago, long before Workforced, I was content to spend my days eating toast and not doing my laundry. How I miss being a lazy student, where my social choices were dictated by my remaining clean clothes. I went swimming a lot. Sadly on one of the days where I had a clean shirt I was sucked into a careers’ fair, which was by all accounts a bad career move.
If work is a major hangover in your life then careers’ fairs were where you got drunk on the free wine. I imagine that being taken into a maximum security prison is a lot like going to a careers’ fair, with all of the life prisoners reaching out of their cages, baying at the new entrants. The analogy between careers’ fairs and prison only goes so far of course. Prisoners get scheduled exercise periods, free meals and time off for good behavior.
Careers’ fairs are full of brochures covered with words like “Learn”, “Explore” and “Develop”. The words on the brochures have nothing to do with the job; they just sound appealing. My company was not impressed when I suggested the words “Giblet”, “Bathtub” and “Chair”, which are at least as relevant as their chosen words.
Of course, when everyone around you is sexing-up their job offerings you have to do the same. In other words, companies lie competitively to keep up with all the other lying companies. It doesn’t matter how bad the job you’re recruiting for is, you have to polish that turd to attract the applicants. I’m still waiting for honest marketing material from any major multinational:
- Shell Oil: become a shell of your former self.
- Toyota: our cars don’t stop and neither will you.
- Goldman Sachs: for a dollar we will eat your freaking kids.
- Small penis? Overcompensate with money. JPMorgan: big M, small organ.
- Deloitte and Touche: toilet and douche.
- HSBC stands for “Holy Sh*t: Banking Collapsed”!
When you open up the brochures you see shiny photographs of a young, multiracial and debonair workforce who have just flossed their teeth. There is enough gloss on the pages to paint a house (or at least hide the underlying waffle). Do you ‘question the question’ or ‘want to reach higher’? No and no. I question your marketing and want to reach for a sick bag.
My favourite booklets come from the employers with the ridiculous company names you get by splicing together corporate sounding word stems. It seems to start a company all you have to do is merge sounds like ‘tech’, ‘capita’, ‘digi’, ‘prog’ and ‘performa’. You don’t need a business strategy or a decent product. You don’t even need a workforce or money. All you need is a name like ‘Infosys’ or ‘Logitech’ and you too can float on a stock exchange.
Without doubt, the most outstanding company name is Cox Communications, the US broadband company. As a growing company in an industry that’s not fully saturated within its potential market, it was only a matter of time before someone pointed out that “Most of the growth of Cox will come from deeper penetration.” I was in an industry conference where that was announced, desperately trying to hold my composure. At the dénouement of his talk the speaker concluded “And that’s why I like Cox.”
It seems too that the joke was lost on Cox when they chose their slogan:
Until next time.
Workforced in the Press
Great Scott! I’ve been interviewed by the BBC! For those of you who were not awake at 3am to catch it on the radio last Tuesday, the webcast is available here. Also, It’s time for me to change the buttons in my sidebar. If you’d like to review Workforced please send me a quick email or leave a comment and I’ll be in touch. You’ll get your blog button in the sidebar for a month plus a permanent text link, a thank you in my next blog post and an hour in a tanning salon*.
* Subject to availability. Availability nil.
The easiest way to make people think you’re smart is to talk about China. Discussing the global economy? …and then there’s China. Discussing Western philosophy? …and then there’s China. Do you think Alsatians taste better than Labradors? …and then there’s China. The only occasion where this doesn’t work is if you’re already talking about China. There’s some unwritten dinner party law that everyone has to have an opinion on China.
Understanding Chinese culture isn’t that difficult, so to save you from having to read Confucius and improving your maths here are the basics of what you need to know to do business in China:
- If someone offers you a delicacy, politely refuse citing an allergy. When something is a delicacy it means that local people don’t eat it most of the time. There is a reason that Kentucky Fried Chicken is more popular than Kentucky Fried Jellyfish, KF Insect, and KF Mystery Meat. No one gets offended when you refuse on medical grounds. It’s far better than trying to grin at your host while you’re swallowing something’s foot. Believe me, I’ve tried.
- Stop staring at the waitress.
- Cover your mouth when you use a toothpick. The only thing worse than watching a man eat something’s foot is watching a man pick out pieces of foot.
- Give and receive business cards with two hands.
- Spitting is acceptable, just not on business cards.
I learned these lessons after a business trip to China that did nothing to advance my career. Years ago I was sent over there with a team for a few months to meet with the managers of various Chinese factories to assess the business operating environment.
I didn’t set out in the best of health. Before the trip I spent my last days at home pleading with doctor after doctor for the strongest conjunctivitis medication they had. They gave me various ointments, applied directly to the eye, which left white globular residues dripping from my eyelashes.
The flight was a disaster. Excess baggage costs were $60 per kilogram and I was no less than forty kilograms overweight: I hadn’t the time to ship my stuff because I had been at the doctor’s. Choking at the prospect of asking my company to reimburse the excess baggage claim, I found a shipping company in the airport that could send my extra bags at a fraction of the cost. The only drawback was that I wouldn’t receive the other suitcases for 10 days, long after I had joined the meetings.
Beggars can’t be choosers, but they can cross national borders without much clothing. I took one bag on the flight but it had no socks or vests. Who cares I thought? I should be able to buy them in Hong Kong because I was stopping over for a day.
On the Hong Kong stopover I bought a ton of counterfeit Tommy Hilfiger socks and vests. It wasn’t until the flight to mainland China that I took one of the cheap vests out of its packaging: it smelt strongly of a fish-like chemical. Do I really have to face the managers of Chinese companies smelling like a haddock, with globular eye-goo dribbling from my lashes? Yes, I do.
Let me not forget to mention that my home bank, in its steadfast approach to beating fraud, had locked my credit card immediately after I used it once in Hong Kong. Great: I smell of fish, I have white gunk falling off my eye and I have no money either. Perhaps I should just stop brushing my teeth too.
The landing card for China asked whether I was carrying any fake goods. Do fish pee in the sea? Did they also pee on my vests? Yes and yes. So before the flight was done I found myself in the airplane toilet with a black biro scribbling on an unconvincing Tommy Hilfiger logo, turning it into a black square. Fortunately I made it through customs without a hitch, which is just as well because the only Chinese I knew an ex-girlfriend taught me: “hello”, “thank you” and “do you want to die?” Luckily, immigration lasted about as long as that relationship.
I spent the first days of the trip very hungry, until the bank unlocked my card. In all, these are not the ideal circumstances in which to meet the managements of regional companies. I can only imagine what the managers I met thought: “Why they send us boy who smell of fish, why he eat all our biscuits, and why he masturbate into own eye?”
A few weeks after the trip, drowning hopelessly in my new job as head of the hopelessly drowning department, I needed a document translated from Chinese to English. Why would you ever ask someone who speaks no Chinese to be part of that team? A translation service quoted me a price of 80 Hong Kong cents for every word translated, with a waiting time of 10-15 days. A fifty page document would have cost me US $6450. I sent them a cheque for 1.60 Hong Kong dollars and asked them to translate two words in English into Chinese. I then told them to 滚 my 开.
Next week: how to avoid getting shot by Congolese rebels whilst looking for a decent WiFi signal.
;)
